Some of us feel a little anxiety if we are divorced or going through a divorce. You feel like, Oh, man. Theyre going to bash me this morning. Im really going to walk out of here and feel like a second class citizen. I want you to set your mind at ease. That's not going to happen today. We just love you. Were glad youre here, and we want you to be ministered to. This topic, its involved. It can be complex. There are a lot of scenarios and trails we could go down. We are giving this a one-week shot, so Im not going to be able to go down every scenario, every trail. Im not going to be able to talk about every Scripture in the Bible that deals with divorce and remarriage. Were going to deal with some of the key issues, the key points; but Im aware that there are other trails we could go down and other Scriptures we could involve, other issues. Im aware of all that, but just within the time constraints, I would encourage you-if you still want more information on the subject-there are plenty of excellent books out there that would help you. Other resources are out there to help guide you along this path. The third thing I want to share is that we can study these passages and the passage were going to read this morning, and there are well-meaning Godly, God-fearing Christians who can come to different conclusions on these passages. You put ten Christians in a room and ask them to share their beliefs on the end times, and you might get ten different opinions. You might say, Well you ten people talk about the spiritual gifts, if theyre for today and how they operate. Youd get ten different responses. Sometimes in that same vein, Christians can study these Scriptures and come to different conclusions as to what they mean; so I hope that you come to your conclusion on the basis of thought, prayer and study, and then well respect one anothers points of view even if we disagree. Okay? Fair enough? So having said that, were going to begin this morning, and were going to begin with a little bit of a survey, okay? It might seem like it has nothing to do with our topic, but just kind of bear with me. Let me see the hands if you are Team Peyton this morning? Team Peyton. Let me see your hands. How many of you are Team Drew today? Good. How many of you have no idea what were doing right now? We are talking about the Super Bowl. Were talking about the quarterbacks for the Colts and the Saints and which team were going to be pulling for today. How many of you are Team Edward? Let me see your hands. Team Edward? Team Jacob? Let me see your hands, okay. Teenagers putting their hands up. How many of you dont know what were talking about? Okay, were talking about Twilight or New Moon or whatever that is. Its a movie. Are you going to be a werewolf or vampire here? You have to pick your side. One more. How many of you are Team Shammai? Then you must be Team Hillel. How many of you are Team Hillel? How many of you have no idea what I am talking about? I dont either, so… No, youre in the right place. I want to tell you about two rabbis. These two rabbis were VIPs. Now were not going to find them in the Bible, but theyre very important to the Scripture were going to look at today because these two men were alive at the time of Jesus, and their schools were very much in their hay-day when Jesus was ministering. So open your Bibles up to the Book of Matthew 19, and were going to find that the Pharisees are coming to Jesus, and theyre going to try to trip him up on the subject of divorce. Theyre going to try to pit him against-really pit him against-Moses. Verse 3 (page 975 of pew Bibles), Some Pharisees… Remember who the Pharisees are. Theyre the religious elite. They are religious leaders. They know the Bible inside and out. They come to Jesus to test Him, and they ask him, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason? What they were really asking is are you Team Shammai or are you Team Hillel? Shammai was a very conservative rabbi. Shammai actually rose to be the president of the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was like the Congress and the Supreme Court rolled in to one. It was these 70 men who ruled legislatively and spiritually over Israel, and he rose to the top. Then later on Hillel would rise to the top. These two guys were polar opposites-not only in their beliefs but in their temperament. Shammai was very reserved and quiet, very restrained but yet had strong opinions; and Hillel was very passionate, very fervent, very emotional and expressed his opinions as well. Shammai said there was only one reason that you can get divorced and one reason alone. That is if there had been adultery that has been committed. So if there has been sexual sin in the form of adultery, then God will permit divorce-but only under those circumstances. Whereas Hillel taught anything goes. Your wife burns your toast, grounds for divorce. You find another woman you like better, grounds for divorce. So Hillel was very liberal in his interpretation of Scripture. So thats what theyre saying. Can he divorce for any reason? Some reason? Are you Team Hillel, or are you Team Shammai? That was the question that was posed of Jesus. Now what is He going to do? I want you to notice in Verse 4 a bit of sarcasm. Youre going to notice that theres a cut down here. It says, Havent you read, he replied, that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female… Do you see the cut down there? Whos he talking to? Hes talking to the Pharisees. These guys are Biblical experts. He says to them, Havent you read Genesis? You mean you havent read Genesis 2? You know the answer to this question? Dont you read your Bible? Thats a dig! Jesus even admitted. He said, You diligently search the Scriptures, He said in the Book of John, because you think that in them you have eternal life. Biblical experts-and Jesus starts off by saying, You mean you havent read about Genesis and Adam and Eve? God made them …male and female and said, For this reason… Because I have made the woman as your help mate, because I have made you for one another. You complete one another. Because Ive made you to have companionship and designed you to be together. For this reason, …a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife… That comes from the root word to glue. What kind of glue do you think God uses? Pretty strong stuff, right? He says, Im going to glue you together, and you will be two, but one flesh. He gave the command to be fruitful and multiply to fill the earth and subdue it. They were going to have offspring. Think about it. Offspring is a manifestation of the spiritual union as husband and wife, isnt it? An offspring is a physical manifestation of the oneness of husband and wife. You are one spiritually or one in the sight of God, and from that union, from that oneness comes a child who is your one flesh-who is both of you but yet his own person. So Jesus takes them right to the very beginning. This is the right person to ask this question of. As Christians we believe that Jesus simply didnt come into being in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, but He is the eternal Son of God that He has always been. There came a point in time when he entered into this world and took on flesh. Prior to that, the Bible teaches that He was at Creation. It says, All things came in to being, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come in to being. So Christ is in the Garden. He is the One who institutes marriage. He is the One who brings the covenant into being. What a better person to ask than the Lord Jesus about what marriage and divorce mean. Think about that. Notice that Jesus is going to say, I say to you, but I say to you, in a little while. When Jesus said that, that was extremely radical. That was talking at the highest authority. He would say, You have heard it said, but I said to you… In fact there was an oral tradition. An oral tradition was written down-it was called the Talmud, and the oral tradition or the Talmud was based on mans interpretation of Gods written law. Guess what two men were very influential in the writing of the Talmud? Shammai and Hillel-very influential in the oral tradition. So Jesus would talk about that oral tradition. He would say, You have heard it said, but I say to you… That was unheard of. Every other rabbi would base what they were about to teach on the rabbis who had come before them. They would say, Well, you know Rabbi so and so who lived 400 years ago said this… The people would say, Oh, well if Rabbi so and so said it, then it must be true. Jesus comes along, and He teaches radical teaching, contrary to much of the oral law-based only on the authority that Hes the One who said it. Wow! How about if I were to come up before you this morning and say, Well, the Bible says…but I say to you…? I get up here and correct the Bible. How would that go over? Not too well, right? You wouldnt be here very long. At least you shouldnt be. Jesus says, But I say to you. So He is saying, I am going to use My authority to tell you the way it should be, and Jesus is going to go back to the original marriage. Hes going to go all the way back to Eden and say, This is the way it was supposed to be. God made them male and female, and for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, be glued to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Friends, if youre trying to have an understanding of what divorce is, you first have to understand how sacred marriage is. If you dont understand how sacred marriage is, you can become very flippant in divorce, very casual in divorce; and we see that prevalent in our society today. We see those schools of thought begin to creep even into the church. There are different schools of thought. There are those who think no divorce whatsoever. There are some Christians who think no divorce under any circumstances; you cannot get a divorce under any circumstances. They say that because in Mark 10 and in Luke 16, Jesus does not give the exception of adultery that Hes going to give here in Matthew 19 or in Matthew 5. Hes not going to do that, so they say, therefore, no grounds for divorce at any time. Other Christians say only adultery. That's the only exception, and that has two schools of thought well talk about later. There is a third group that says there are two reasons: theres adultery, and theres desertion. They cite 1 Corinthians 7, which says if you were married to an unbeliever, dont divorce them because of an unbeliever, but if they leave, they leave and youre not bound. Youre free. You can marry again, and divorce is okay. So they think that desertion is a second reason. Then theres a fourth school of thought which seems to be very prevalent and that is anything goes. Thats Team Hillel. You dont feel like you love them anymore. Thats good enough. Youre not getting along anymore. You dont see eye to eye anymore. The passion is not there. Well, thats good enough. I dont love you anymore. Listen, what God says about love is very different than what we say about love. When he says, I dont love you anymore, or she says, I dont love you anymore, it means I dont feel passionate toward you. I dont feel sexual feelings toward you. I dont feel intimacy toward you. The Bible says the word love is much more than that. Its the word agape. Its the God kind-of-love that were to love our spouses with. Its not based upon our emotions, but its based upon our will. It is a decision we make whether our emotions line up with it or not that I am going to seek your highest and best as my spouse. Over the passing of time if emotions wane, Im still going to seek your highest and best. What happens when we do things the right way, when we love our husbands and wives with an agape love, we find emotions begin to conform to our actions rather than letting our actions dictate what we do or dont do. We let Gods Word dictate to us. See, you always go back to the original. You dont look to society. You dont look to culture. You dont look to the popular authors of the talking heads on TV to tell you, What does marriage look like? You go to the source of marriage. You go to the first one and say, What did that look like? What was that intended to be? A man and a woman for life. A man and a woman for life-you go to the original. If youre cutting something, always cut by the original. You measure and cut the original, and then every subsequent copy, you go back to the original because otherwise youll be off. If youre trying to base your measurements and cutting on that sixth piece that you cut off, its going to be wrong. Go back to the original. You want to see what the church of the Lord Jesus is supposed to look like? Read Acts 2. Read the first church and how they treated one another and how they lived and responded. You go to the original. The same is true with our words. How many of you have had words distorted because somebody has taken something out of context or its repeated? Second, third, fourth, sixth person, and finally that sixth person comes back to you. Theyll obey what the Bible says, and theyll go right to the source and say, Did you say this or did you do that? Youre like, What? No! Anybody [out there that] that happened to? Let me see your hands. It gets so distorted and perverted that by the time it gets back to you, its like, That was not my intent. That was not the context. Thats not what I said. Heres the truth, so you go back to the source. So Jesus takes them back to the source, and heres what it is: God designed marriage. God created marriage. Its a covenant that He established. Its one man, its one woman, and its for a lifetime. Therefore, God permits divorce-were going to read about that, but divorce is not in His perfect will-if anything falls short of Gods perfect ideal, its called sin. Now that does not mean if you seek a divorce on Biblical grounds, youve committed sin. What Im saying is that divorce is from the will of man, not the will of God because Jesus is very clear of what the will of God is. Sin means to fall short. Its an archery term; thats where it came from. Hamartia-you shoot an arrow, and if you miss the target, youve committed sin. Youve committed Hamartia. Youve fallen short of your goal. Youve not hit the bulls-eye. Youve missed. So heres Gods ideal, and anything less than Gods ideal is sin. It misses the mark. Some of you say, Well, boy. I didnt know about this, and Ive divorced, and I really didnt have Biblical grounds. Well talk about that. Ive got some good news for you too as well. Divorce is not the unpardonable sin. God offers grace, forgiveness, and restoration to you. We think about the woman at the well who in John 4 had been married five times and was living with a man that was not her husband. What did Jesus offer for her? Condemnation or restoration? He gave her a new start. God can forgive you and give you a new start. We always go back to the original, and that is what we form our opinion on-not upon what is popular in culture of society because society and culture at that point had deteriorated, so that it was nothing like what God had intended it to be-nothing like that. So they ask a follow-up question of Jesus. Theyre a little bit confused. It says, Why then did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away. Theyre making it sound like Moses commanded divorce. Moses never commanded divorce. Moses permitted divorce. Jesus replied, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard, but it is not the way it was from the beginning. Its not the way God intended it to be, and its not the way that it should be. Gods intention and plan have not changed. So He talks about the ideal first. Next Hes going to talk about the real, but lets take a look. What does He mean when they say, Well Moses said certificate of divorce… Lets look on the screen to Deuteronomy 24:1. This is from Deuteronomy 24 (page 194), and this is the passage that these men were referring to. It says, If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house… That's it. That's how easy it was to get a divorce. There was no judge. There were no lawyers. There wasnt tons of paperwork, dividing of assets. You would write a letter called a Writ of Divorce. Two witnesses would sign off on that letter, youd give it to your wife, and youd say, Were done. Youre free to marry somebody else. Heres this loophole, this big black hole if you found something indecent with your wife. What does that mean? What does indecent mean? Shammai said indecent means only if there is sexual sin, and Hillel said anything-anything, any reason. Shes just no longer acceptable to you. Sadly, thats pervaded into the church-that we think we can just-whatever the grounds, we can divorce. Ill never forget when I was a pastor in Rockford, an assistant pastor, it was a Wednesday night and we were preparing our talk. A couple came to me and they said, We have to talk to you because were going to get a divorce. I said, Well, its Wednesday night. Weve got church. Were really busy. Can I see you tomorrow? No, we have to talk to you now. If we dont talk to a pastor now, our marriage is over with. It was like, Really? I dont want to be responsible for your marriage ending, so if its that much of an emergency, come on in. So the couple came in and sat down. Id never seen them before. I said, Okay, well whats going on? Whats the big, big emergency here? She said, Well this is my second marriage. I have a son through my first marriage. I said, Okay. She said, He disciplines him when he comes over to the house, and I dont like it. He said, Well, if hes in my house, then Ive got a right to discipline him. She said, No, you dont. Hes my son, not yours. She said, He sits at the table and he chews his food, and he yells at him for chewing his food too loud! He said, He does chew his food too loud, and he does it on purpose to irritate me! He doesnt do it on purpose! He has to. He has an overbite. No he doesnt! He just does it to make me mad! No… Im like, Wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Time out! Time out! Time out! Lets not deal with that right now. Lets deal with the real issues. Why are you here today? What has causing your marriage to end? Guess what I found out? It never got any deeper than that. That was the reason that they had to see me that day. That was the reason their marriage would end if they didnt talk to a pastor. I was thinking, Youve got to be kidding me! You have got to be kidding me! I just remember giving them a lecture about where Jesus sets the bar, and He sets it high. Theyre like, Wow! I dont know what happened to them. I never seen them before. I have no idea how that story ended, but probably-I dont know. I dont know what to say, but I reminded them of the covenant of marriage, where God has set the bar, and what marriage is. I mean listen to the response of the Disciples in Verse 10, not the Pharisees, but the Disciples. After Jesus says this about marriage, the Disciples got all choked up. Then they said, If this is the situation between a husband and a wife, it is better not to marry. Wow! If this is the level of commitment you have to have, its probably better not to get married, isnt it? Wow! You really have to be serious because in their society, marriage had become disposable, just like in ours. Sadly just like sometimes in the church. Now Jesus gives an exception here. He does not give this in Luke; He does not give this in Mark, but He does talk about this twice in the Book of Matthew. He says in Verse 9 (back to Matthew 19, page 975), I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery. Hes saying because of your sin, God will allow this. God will permit this in this situation when vows are broken. Two schools of thought: there are some who say this is only adultery. If youre married and you have a relationship, a sexual relationship, with somebody else other than your husband or wife, thats the only grounds for divorce. Theres another school of thought which believes that it is sexual immorality-which is a much broader term than just adultery. Notice that there are two words in this passage. One says marital unfaithfulness, and one says, adultery. Those are not the same words, and theyre not synonymous in their meaning. The first two words here come from one word. Where it says marital unfaithfulness, it comes from one word in the Greek, which is the word porne (pronounced por-ne-a). We get the word pornography from it. It means sexual immorality. Sexual immorality. So it is a broader term. If Jesus wanted to say adultery, then He would have used the word adultery here, but He does not do that. He doesnt say, But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife except for adultery in marriage and marries another woman commits adultery. He uses an entirely different word. If theres a situation where a spouse is having an affair with somebody of the same sex, that is porne. If theres a situation that there is incestuous behavior on behalf of a parent, that is porne. That is sexual immorality. There are others we could talk about where there has been an indecent sexual act that has violated that marriage covenant. There are many who believe that that as well is grounds for divorce. Whatever the situation, I strongly believe that our first option is not to run to a lawyer or to a judge, but our first option should be that of reconciliation-especially as believers, our goal should be to save the marriage when possible, when it is right to do so. There are some situations. There was a situation in the media. This is not gossip. It was all over the news of a governor who had an affair. The affair was discovered, and he went in and had an awkward press conference. His wife chose not to stand by her man at the press conference, but she did decide to try to reconcile the relationship; but he would not end his relationship with this woman from another country. He still wanted to see her. That was his soul mate. Well, what is she supposed to do then? At that point, she had to seek a divorce because he was continuing to be unfaithful to his vows and unfaithful to her. In that situation, according to what I understand from Matthew 19 and Matthew 5, Jesus says God permits it in that situation. We believe that reconciliation is the first goal, but reconciliation is hard work. There are a lot of people that will whisper in your ear when youre going through marital difficulties, Just divorce him. Just divorce her. Take the easy way out, but it is impossible to rip apart one flesh without there being suffering, without there being heartache. So God says the first desire is to be reconciled with our mate, and that takes hard work. It takes owning our sin, owning our part of the relationship or the things that we have done wrong, the things that we have said that are wrong, the things that we should have done that we didnt do. It requires forgiveness to the person who has been wronged. Usually thats mutual of forgiving one another of the harms and the wrongs theyve done. It requires communication. It requires changing patterns of behavior and patterns of speech. It is hard work, but if we will commit to God and to one another, marriages can be reconciled; and you can find that that union is stronger than it was before if couples will commit to that end. Our production team has put together a media. Im very proud of them. I think its one of the best things theyve ever done. It is put to a song called, While Im waiting, which gives us a word picture of what Ive talked about. I want us to listen now to that song. (Lyrics can be found at: http://www.lyricsmania.com/while_im_waiting_lyrics_john_waller.html).